An active Fault-Tolerant Control method for a low-cost and fixed-wing UAV

Abstract

An active Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) technique for a low-cost and fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) subjected to several scenarios of sensor and actuator faults is presented in the paper. To implement the FTC system, a Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) block based on Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is used to detect and identify various sensor and actuator faults, and a control reconfiguration system is applied to carry out corresponding recovery actions according to the messages provided by the FDI module when the UAV breaks down. Simulation results showed that the proposed method is satisfied for the UAV with sensor or actuator faults.